Google Click-to-Call

1. What's the phone icon on Google search results? How does it work?
We're testing a new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page – over the phone.
Here's how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click 'Connect For Free,' Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party.
We won't share your telephone number with anyone, including the advertiser. When you're connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked so the advertiser can't see it. In addition, we'll delete the number from our servers after a short period of time.

2. Am I charged to connect to an advertiser?
No. Google foots the bill for all calls - local and long-distance. However, if we call a mobile phone number, you may incur airtime fees depending on the mobile phone plan. Check your mobile phone provider for details.

3. Is this just a way for Google to track me?
No. We take your privacy very seriously. Google does not share your telephone number with anyone (without your consent), including the advertiser. When you're connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked. The advertiser can't see your phone number.

In addition, we retain your information (including your phone number, date, time, and call length) only temporarily. It will be deleted from our servers after a period reasonably necessary to operate, audit, and evaluate the service.

4. Whose caller ID do I see when connected?
The advertiser's number appears on your caller ID when Google connects you. This way, you can save the merchant's number for future call-backs.

The idea of open source ... & India

Open source software has two properties :
(a) the ``source code'' (the programs themselves) is freely distributed, and
(b) it is generally illegal to convert this into a proprietary version. While the rules of the game require that the program itself should be distributed at zero cost, traditional commercial contracts govern consulting, customisation and support.

Open source and economic growth in India.
From an economist's perspective, what can we say about the impact upon India's economy of open source software? Hardware and software are capital goods. When the price of software drops to zero, it means that information technology is available at a lower cost. This improves the speed at which India's economy can grow.

If IT implementations (today) in India primarily rely on stolen software, then the appeal of free software as a device for cost--reduction is limited. However, most larger companies are increasingly unwilling to take the risk of using pirated software

Ready - Set - 4.0!

Sugar Suite 4.0 marks the seventh major release by SugarCRM. Sugar Suite's fast innovation development rate is driven by the SugarCRM community of 3,000 developers and 10,000 members, which provides product direction, testing, translations, and modules to Sugar Suite 4.0.

Sugar Suite 4.0 enhances and extends functionality across sales, marketing, service, collaboration, reporting and administration. See what SugarCRM's community and customers deem valuable for today's business tools.

We invite you to experience and test the new functionality to see how it will positively affect your business. As a SugarCRM community member, we look to you for insights about the functionality and the direction that Sugar Suite should follow to improve your business needs. This is the earliest we've made a new release available for public review prior to General Availability.

Yahoo Think Tank explores the limits of online creativity

Yahoo Australia is sponsoring a two-week experiment in online creativity called the Yahoo! Think Tank. Rotating teams of creative people from ad agencies in Australia and New Zealand are living and working in a "transparent," fully-functioning creative studio, complete with a desk, PC and whiteboards. Six webcams enable people from around the world to watch these creatives at work, 24/7. It's quite interactive: You can submit creative briefs (concepts you'd like them to brainstorm on) via an online form and submit messages to be displayed on a plasma screen in their "think tank." You can also view a gallery of previously submitted briefs and the ideas the teams came up with. The Yahoo! Think Tank will be operational through November 17th.

Yahoo, Google to launch new wireless services

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) are set to roll out new wireless services, taking advantage of advanced networks and cellphones to provide features similar to those available on computers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Yahoo soon will introduce a cellphone it will sell through a partnership with SBC Communications (SBC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , according to SBC executives. The phone will take Yahoo a step closer to linking music, photos and email with consumers' existing online accounts, address books and preferences, the paper said.

IT links CRM, analytical tools to keep customers

Companies are increasingly looking to tie traditional CRM systems to analytical tools to retain and boost the value of customers, according to users at SAS Institute Inc.'s BetterManagement Live Worldwide Business Conference 2005 here this week.

Aegon Direct Marketing Services Inc., the Baltimore-based direct marketing arm of Aegon USA Inc., this week began a year-long rollout of SAS CRM and analytical tools that will replace four legacy CRM systems that run marketing campaigns at four locations.

Can Open Source Outdo the IPod?

Consumer electronics manufacturer Neuros Audio is tapping the open-source community to convert its upcoming portable media player from iPod road kill into a contender.

This could be a stroke of genius. Open-source Linux has taken on Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system, and Mozilla has challenged the ubiquitous Internet Explorer web browser. In the same way, open source would seem suited to breaking Apple Computer's digital music stranglehold. Open-source geeks might not represent the typical consumer, demographics-wise. But hackers don't like to waste time with a clumsy user interface.

Blogging claims another victim...

Blogging claims another victim, and bloggers here call for self-restraint

Indra Nooyi, Neil French, the 'Dog-shit-girl' from Korea. If there's one thing they have in common, it'd be their dislike for irresponsible blogging. Advertising legend Neil French, the latest to have fallen victim to a bloggers' witch hunt, calls it 'death by blog'. Controversies over blogging are not new closer home too.

In two recent cases, bloggers here burnt their fingers — one, in which the case that they were espousing turned out to be fake, and the second one in which bloggers have been slapped with legal notices for having 'tarnished the reputation' of an institute.

In the second case, the blogger who started it ended up quitting his job because he felt the company had come under pressure.
...
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What is creativity?

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and other.

Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

1. Need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation
2. Need to communicate ideas and values
3. Need to solve problems

So now the question comes what you need/require to be creative or how to be creative?

In order to be creative

you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective.
you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives.
you need the ability to generate alternatives
you need to see things uniquely
you need to have more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as

flexibility
tolerance of ambiguity
and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown.

Low-Cost, Open Source CRM

Open source may finally be arriving on the CRM scene. While still a minority in the market, a growing number of companies are choosing to provide CRM software free of up-front expense. As companies like Red Hat have demonstrated, free software can work for customers and make money. "The idea is that enough of CRM capabilities are becoming commoditized, so why not give those functions away for free and make money off services, such as customization, support, documentation, and upgrades. And i have been associated with one of the company called Apptility Software's in India. The company try to provide low-cost innovative solutions to small and medium enterprises by leveraging our expertise in open source and social computing technologies with an emphasis on measurable cost savings and revenue enhancements

Yahoo! has announced its entry into podcasting

Yahoo! has announced its entry into podcasting with the beta release of Yahoo! Podcasts. The new Yahoo! Podcasts service enables consumers to easily find,

listen to, rate and review online audio programs.

The entire development of the product took place at Yahoo!'s Bangalore Software Development Centre. “The development of Yahoo! Podcasts from our Bangalore centre brings new market innovations from India for the global market,” said Dr. Prasad Ram, chief technology officer, Yahoo! R&D, India. “Audio Search technology developed at Yahoo! Bangalore is the most sophisticated vertical search product to-date,” he added.

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Blog Spammers Take Aim at Google

Google Inc.'s free BlogSpot service has become a happy hunting ground for spammers cashing in on the easy integration of AdSense advertisements into the 'push-button' publishing tool.

Over the past few days, the situation has spiraled out of control, prompting outrage from bloggers and third-party blog search providers and an acknowledgement from Google that there's a "tricky problem" to be solved.

An automated spam blog (splog) attack over the weekend was first flagged by Lockergnome's Chris Pirillo, who accused Google of hosting a "crapfarm" of fake blogs.

Or better we call it SplogSpot.

Indian President expressed concern about a free mapping program from Google

Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern Saturday about a free mapping program from Google, warning it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets.

Google Earth, launched in June this year, allows users to access overlapping satellite photos. Although not all areas are highly detailed, some images are very high resolution, and some show sensitive locations in various countries.

The Google site contains clear aerial photos of India's parliament building, the president's house and surrounding government offices in New Delhi. There are also some clear shots of Indian defense establishments.
Something very much concerning from security point of view?

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E-mail Management

# E-mails are company documents.
# E-mails are not private; they belong to Microsoft
# Always think about how your e-mail reflects on you and Microsoft.
# E-mails you create can become public.
# Never use e-mail to make inappropriate comments about people or situations.
# While writing e-mails

* Be very concise.
* Don’t exaggerate points.
* Use appropriate language for business communication.
* Don’t disparage others in anyway.
* Don’t offer legal interpretations.

# Be careful when selecting to whom the e-mail will be distributed or forwarded.
# The bottom line is:treat all e-mail as professional communications.They're not personal; they're business documents.
# While there are plenty of instances where being creative in our jobs is a good thing, when it comes to e-mail, it’s in everyone’s best interest to follow the business rules.

Source- Shachi

Open source boom

A little factoid that many may not be aware of is that despite our massive IT balance of trade deficit, this country is the place to be when it comes to open source development. Believe it or not, Australia has more open source developers per head of capita than anywhere else.
Open source development projects with esoteric sounding names such as
Samba,
Mambo,
Squid,
Lams and Moodle,
plus better-known projects such as Apache,
OpenOffice.org,
Gnome,
KDE,
and MySQL,
have Australian developers in prominent roles.

More here

Gone are those days

Gone are the days when you had to plan to buy a PC, now all you need is to do is buy a PC first and plan...never! And the best part is, in these PCs quality is not compromised, rather to some extent it is made better at this price.

HCL has launched a PC at Rs. 9,990.
The AMDX 86 1.6 Ghz PC,
Is powered with a 128MB RAM,
A 40GB Hard Drive,
A 52X CD ROM, and
A 15-inch colour monitor.

The PC comes with Linux Operating System, but if you want, add Rs. 1,240 and get a new-launched Windows XP Starter Edition.

Corporate Business Communication

Hope this will help for those who are aiming for Business Roles.

* Listen, Enhance Active Listening and be Self Questioning.
* Do not be Blindsighted by Negativity or Coloured by Bias about anything.
* Never do Feature Comparison of Business Applications.
* Understand Business Needs and Their Concerns rather than proving.
* Understand before you trying to be Understood.
* Don't Fight the problem, Study it.
* Body Language leads the way and will Reflect in Communication.
* Always Listen to Understand rather than Listening to Reply.
* Uncover Hidden concerns and do not exhibit Selling skills everytime.
* Do not foster Risk Enhancement but foster Risk Management.
* Do not beg, plead or show desperation anytime. It will be Parent-Child communication and not an Adult- Adult communication. Have silent Confidence and gain silent Confidence from others.No one will have confidence in you when you don't have confidence in yourself.

Source- Microsoft

Open-Source Success Roiling Software Field

You probably paid too much for the software you're using — not to mention the software company you've invested in.

That's the growing consensus of analysts watching the rise of open-source software, built on the notion that software should be free for everyone to use, tweak and develop further.

For every multimillion-dollar software program being sold, there's a good chance that at least one free alternative can do the same thing, at a fraction of the cost.

If that's good news for tech buyers, it's downright chilling for tech investors.Few open-source programs claim to be as complex or full featured as their commercial counterparts. But for many customers, they're more than adequate.

Open Source: Now It's an Ecosystem

This software movement is branching into not just mainstream business applications but also the associated services. And VCs are eager to help.

Eighteen months ago John Roberts, Clint Oram, and Jacob Taylor decided to quit their jobs at Epiphany, a maker of customer-relationship software. The trio wanted to target the same market, but write a new application developed using open-source code. It took them only three months to create the program and just another month to close their first round of funding. Little more than a year later, their company, SugarCRM, has given away more than 325,000 copies of its software, and raised a second round of capital, for a total of $7.75 million.

Mozilla Under Fire is that so ?

As allegations of malicious code and heightened insecurity swirl around, Mozilla has updated its Firefox Web browser in what is being termed, "a security and stability release."

Mozilla today released version 1.07 of Firefox, which includes numerous security fixes. Security firm Secunia has rated at least one as "extremely critical."

CAN-2005-2968 titled "Firefox Command Line URL Shell Command Injection" is also known as Mozilla Bugzilla Bug 307185 "URLs passed on the command line are parsed by the shell (bash).

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